You Could Believe in Nothing

  Jamie Fitzpatrick

  Copyright © 2011, Jamie Fitzpatrick

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Vagrant Press is an imprint of Nimbus Publishing Limited

  3731 Mackintosh St, Halifax, NS B3K 5A5

  (902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Author photo: Bobbie-Lee Gosse

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Fitzpatrick, Jamie, 1961-

  You could believe in nothing / Jamie Fitzpatrick.

  ISBN 978-155109-882-1

  I. Title.

  PS8611.I892Y69 2011 C813’.6 C2011-903897-8

  Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage.

  For my parents, Matt and Julia Fitzpatrick, and

  Paul Greeley, my original collaborator.

  ONE

  He can fly, as Ronnie Bulgin used to say.

  In the muted winter light of Derek’s youth, Ronnie Bulgin was a sentinel, remote and unyielding behind the glass at the far blue line. Fixing his chunky horn-rims on a bantam game or Flyers practice, his puffy face slack with concentration, Ronnie would stand silent, occasionally lifting a yellowed forefinger.

  “He can fly, buddy, I tell you.”

  Given Ronnie’s outport drawl and misshapen palate, it came out as Eekuhn floyy, buhee, uh tal oo, followed by an authoritative, congested snort. All the heaving and hawking to clear the snot from his passages was like the firing of an engine, the stoking of a hockey mind. His gallery—a handful of boys, a few men off the morning shift with nowhere else to be—would murmur assent as Ronnie folded his arms across his dirty ski jacket, resuming his watch.

  Derek spent almost every afternoon at the rink that year. He was eleven years old and his father had left home. Dad had to go, because he had been screwing other women. This was never said out loud, and Derek couldn’t recall how he came to know the truth, or when he understood that it was known throughout town.

  His mother never stopped moving that winter, pushing the family through each day, resolute, her face like a plaster mask. For all her haste, a spirit of lawlessness overtook the household. Dinner late, homework undone, agitated voices in the morning, dirty shirts and socks trailing downstairs to the laundry room. Derek didn’t want to be there. So after school he went to the rink, sinking himself into the cold smells of coffee, exhaust, and damp. Boys playing games of no importance. The Zamboni turning unhurried circles. Ronnie at his post, smudging the glass with a snotty sleeve.

  The memory gave Derek something to hold on to as his hangover gathered and took the shape of a heavy sponge behind his face. All he wanted was to get from his kitchen to his back porch. The rust from the door latch left an orange stain on his thumb. Derek jiggled it and swore out loud. He had meant to replace the latch, should have replaced it long ago. If only he could get his head out of his ass, he could do all the things he should have done long ago.

  Thick with beer and whisky, the sponge was a living thing, expanding, threatening to pop his eyes from their sockets. It crowded his senses and crossed their wires, so that the smell of the kitchen became a taste in his mouth and the sight of hard rain on the window gave him a trickling sensation below the waist. The orange rust on his thumb looked spicy, like he should taste it.

  The euphoria of binge drinking had been one of the great revelations of Derek’s youth. Not unlike discovering sex, in how it opened a secret, vibrant world beyond the surface of things. But he couldn’t drink anymore, not properly. At forty-one, a late night was little more than a determined push to oblivion. Hangovers were crippling, arriving with pinpricks of anxiety and dread, an unspecified shame. Still, he kept at it. Some part of him relished the shameful impulse, and there was that perfect moment in the cold fullness of a bottle, heavy and wet in your fingers. Drink was a volume business. Pile it aboard you. As the hours rushed towards morning, it beat the alternative, which for Derek meant going home to the empty apartment, to his bed without Nicole in it.

  The door popped open and the back porch chill poured into the kitchen, sending goose bumps up his arms. The linoleum of the porch, so cold last week it cracked like glass, had turned soft with the sudden thaw, sinking beneath his feet. The middle of the floor was where Derek always scattered his hockey gear to dry. But the elbow and shin pads were still soaked through with last night’s sweat. Piece by piece, he shovelled it into the bag.

  Yes, Shawn Gover can fly. Eekuhn floyy, buhee. But what a shithead. Derek figured he must have had it too easy as a kid. Young, quicksilver Shawn was overstaying shifts and hogging the puck back when he was the fastest guy on the team. Old, spotty Shawn held fast to his entitlements. Derek should have spoken up last night, should have had it out with him after the game: Change with your line, Shawn, for fuck’s sake. But the mood in the room was giddy—nobody figured they’d beat Peddle’s Insurance, not with those big cunts they have on defense. The made-for-TV jubilation of Stanley Cup winners is no match for a roomful of doughy men emboldened by a good rec game. Watch them tear open the two-four with abandon. See the exhaustion, the rush of blood, and the beer buzz lift them, weightless, to an earlier time, back when the body was a rubbery instrument of delight, made for speed, agility, sweat, drink, sex.

  The porch embarrassed him with its reminders of his delusional life with Nicole, their grand plans and momentary enthusiasms. Paint cans recalled lusty early days, when redecorating ideas were conceived in post-coital repose and soon abandoned. The nylon tent and Coleman stove had been used once, on a rainy weekend at Terra Nova, when Derek decided he hated the woods. Nicole’s battered sneakers were left from the summer they meant to go running together. Derek bored quickly and gave up. But she kept going, out in any weather, messing up her hamstrings and wearing through two pairs of shoes.

  Excusing himself on the grounds that he was still a bit drunk, Derek lifted the sneakers and gave them a sniff.

  She still cluttered the apartment, especially the bedroom. White blouses from her waitressing jobs hung frayed and yellowing in the closet. Old tights and underwear lay in a tangle behind the computer hutch, where she had discarded them while packing. Junk jewellery rattled unseen in dresser drawers. But in the four weeks since her airport taxi slipped away, tail lights blurring in the 5:00 AM fog, her presence had faded. There was no whiff of the creams and shampoos that had once choked the bathroom, or the blue stuff she used to squirt on her chest. The clothes had lost her more intimate scent, earthy and overripe.

  Derek’s hockey gloves reeked of something foreign. Like cat’s piss, but he didn’t own a cat. He zipped the bag and bent to hoist it, bringing on a spasm of pain that made his jaw quiver. The sponge filled to bursting, a fermented taste descended from somewhere behind his nose, and Nicole appeared so vivid he could see the blemishes under her eyes and count the creases in her front teeth. He missed her. She pissed him off. Mostly, he wanted to fuck her, reassert his authority, give her a good going-over to cast all doubt from her min
d. It wasn’t a rape fantasy, exactly. But you wouldn’t call it lovemaking either.

  The problem with Shawn Gover was that you couldn’t really have it out with him, because his wife was dead. Killed by a virus, a virus rare enough that it made the news. That was a few years ago, and Shawn was a better hockey player for it. He used to be a serious asshole, cross-checking guys in the back and screaming for the puck and calling his linemates cocksuckers. But since his wife died the rancour had drained away or gone dormant. So he wasn’t an asshole anymore. He was just a shithead hogging ice time, and you couldn’t have it out with him because he was tragic. Well, fuck, even a guy with a dead wife has to change with his line.

  Shawn relied on one decent trick, a timing thing. He liked to float between the circles, thumb up his hole, and then zip to the net just as the puck arrived. It’s harder than it looks, and if you’ve got it down you don’t need hands or a move. Just get your stick on the ice. Shawn scores. Then he lifts one knee and pumps his arm, like Gretzky used to. Gretzky the whiner, snivelling little shit chasing referees all over the ice, griping and moaning, like two hundred points a year wasn’t enough.

  Ronnie Bulgin never took to Gretzky. Always curled a lip at the mention of the name, as if there was something distasteful in such gaudy success. It was understood that Ronnie perceived more than he could articulate, or perhaps more than he chose to. Whether he worked this up as an affectation was hard to say. Sealed off from the outside world, old St. Paul’s Arena was a place for men like Ronnie. Men who didn’t belong anywhere else.

  Derek slithered down the front step and over the icy lumps separating sidewalk from street. He lifted the hatch of the Escort and wedged the bag inside. The final push sent him down on one knee, soaking his jeans in slush. A light glowed from Strickland’s front room, and there was a stirring behind the shutters. The solitary Strickland, face like a dying balloon, his gluey bedhead a testament to odd hours, distraction, neglect. Derek was in there once, after the fence between their yards collapsed. The place was cleaner than he expected, but close, like a laundry room in need of ventilation.

  The Escort started on the first try and the radio came to life in the middle of the news. A head-on collision killed a teenager in Ramea, the mayor and deputy mayor traded slurs, a dispute at a fish plant. The CBC announcer stumbled, her voice dry. Derek pictured a plain woman near his own age, several months removed from her latest blundering relationship, an obvious candidate for the weekend news shift.

  Derek turned the radio dial in search of his father.

  “Hey-Hey Lou Langdon” they called him. The weekday early-morning man at Classix 490, a station serving up beloved hits from the lush, early days of rock ’n’ roll. Lately, Lou had been working Saturday shifts as well. So Derek was not surprised to hear his father’s voice booming from the dashboard.

  …great opportunity, that’s for sure, that’s for sure. What a day for a deal! It’s Hey-Hey Lou Langdon, coming to you live at Wareham’s Home Appliance Warehouse. It’s the springtime clearance sale-abration. Save twenty percent off or more.

  Derek wanted his father to come clean, declare himself. I am a disc jockey. I believe in rock ’n’ roll. I am an unfaithful husband. It was thirty years since the separation, the winter of chaos, Ronnie Bulgin, the trail of smelly clothes down the basement stairs. His parents had been reconciled so long that Derek never expected the marriage to founder again.

  The call from his sister, Cynthia, had come just after Christmas. Their father had admitted to a relapse. Another woman. Or women, said Cindy, through gritted teeth. Derek was so astonished that he laughed at the news, a manic, barking laugh. Watching his mother retreat into a silence in the weeks following, he was thrown back on his childhood anxieties. But he soon understood that it wasn’t like the earlier breakup, or not like his memory of it. Lou and Elizabeth Butt were older now, their children grown. They stayed under the same roof, and after several months filled with tension and foreboding they seemed to be rallying, recovering composure, determined to carry on as normal. Like Londoners going about their business during the Blitz, crawling from bomb shelters to serve tea in shattered sitting rooms.

  Coming up we’ve got solid gold from Chilliwack, a double shot from the summer of ’67 with the Stones and Buffalo Springfield, and let’s kick it off with Terry Jacks and a number-one smash from 1974, “Seasons in the Sun,” right here on Classix 490.

  Lou Langdon was unchanging. A career disc jockey, a familiar voice since the early sixties, he delivered the past with antiquarian polish. Though lately a gentle croak pricked the upper reaches of his voice. The limber baritone was showing its age, or perhaps the wear of a lifetime in radio. To Derek it sounded dry, parched. He imagined Lou Langdon and his fellow baby boomers gathered with their treasured records, playing one old song after another, thirsting for the years that had slipped away.

  The chill from the floor of the car was climbing into Derek’s legs. He jacked up the heat, started the windshield wipers to clear the space in front of him, and thumbed his father’s number on the cellphone. The singer on the radio was apparently dying, singing his goodbyes.

  “How are you, sport?” said Lou.

  “I heard you, down at the furniture place.”

  “There’s always a retail remote on Saturday,” said Lou. “Big shopping day.”

  “How’s everything? How’s Mom?”

  “She’s good. Grand.”

  Details of the affair—or whatever it was—were unknown to Derek and Cynthia. “It’s over, long over,” was all his mother would say. What Derek most resented was his father’s urge to confess. That’s how it had all come out. The long-ago trysts should have gone to the grave as Lou’s secret.

  There was a sputtering sound over the phone, then silence. Derek waited until his father’s voice returned, thin and intermittent.

  “What’s that?” Derek shouted, his head throbbing in protest.

  “—for lunch?”

  “That’s why I called,” said Derek. “Are we still on for lunch?”

  “Absolutely. Twelve-thirty good?”

  “Okay.” Derek and his father never ate alone. Except when he was a boy, during the winter separation. Lou would collect him at the house on Saturdays and they would drive for a long time before stopping at an Irving station to eat huge plates of French fries with gravy. Sometimes they drove as far as the Placentia turnoff. Those were the longest talks they ever had. Cynthia, a year older than Derek, old enough to take sides, never came along.

  “Come by the station around noon—over to Nev Connolly’s for a bite.”

  Lou Langdon’s was an amiable, back-slapping world where men with names like Nev and Donny and Clarkey did business, their personalities filling great, wide spaces. A shop or restaurant was never called by its proper name.

  “Is there something going on with Curtis?” Derek’s arsehole half-brother had resurfaced a few weeks ago with an email from Vancouver Island, introducing a new wife. His third.

  “Oh, no. Not at all,” said Lou, with a laugh meant to suggest that the question was foolish. “This is just between me and you.”

  Spinning and finally catching in the wet snow, the car roared to the top of Mullock Street, running a stop sign along the way. Like everyone in the family, Derek drove with a near-suicidal confidence. “It’s the other guy you got to worry about,” Lou had told him during their first driving lesson.

  Slapping wipers revealed a city as still and colourless as the overcast sky. A left turn onto Bonaventure Avenue brought him to a summit overlooking the downtown basin. The distant harbour was strangely illuminated, rippling with what might have been a summer shower. Some cities offer themselves up. Come on in and make it your town! Not St. John’s. It is what it is, and if it’s not for you it will fuck up your life. Derek had seen it happen.

  He drew deep breaths, forcing them out with an audible whoosh. His wet
legs shivered, and he tried to extend them against the floor of the car. Soon he’d be cutting lazy circles and dropping for stretches, down to where he could see the loops and scars in the ice. “It’s gonna be good,” he told the windshield.

  Another sharp turn began his journey west to Feildian Gardens, and sent books and binders sliding across the back seat and down to the muddy floor. More of Nicole’s old shit.

  She was no conventional beauty, with her sharp nose and spotted cheeks. But her golden skin always turned heads in lily-white St. John’s. Her black hair ran long and smooth, and had she carried herself with a little more mystery she might have passed for a gypsy, or the homicidal seductress from an old movie. She had family scattered all over Conception Bay, but the dark complexion was specific to Nicole’s crowd on the north side. Evidence, she said, that Portuguese fishermen had charmed their way into the bloodline.

  The rink parking lot was lumpy with ice. Derek checked the dashboard clock and worked out the time difference to Ottawa. Nicole would be waking now, shuffling to the bathroom, tiny handfuls of ass peaking from her long T-shirt. As she settled on the toilet, the blue-green room at Feildian Gardens would warm with the boozy sweat and proximity of men. He could see Nicole drinking coffee in silence, gnawing a thumbnail between sips, while Shawn Gover skated tight, useless circles, quick and feckless in his ancient pisspot helmet. Now that Derek was more awake, the memory of Ronnie Bulgin was slipping out of focus. Ronnie was long dead, all those afternoons at St. Paul’s Arena were gone without a trace.

  Derek sat beside Steve Heneghan and pulled his T-shirt overhead. Heneghan rubbed hard between his eyes and pulled at a drooping mustache.

  “Taking the young feller to a birthday party after this,” said Steve. “Pick him up from swimming and tear off to the Fluvarium. What a fucking production.”

  Down to his underwear, Derek felt the room on his skin. He leaned a sweating palm against the cool cinder-block wall to kick off his pants. Melted snow pooled between his feet on the rubber floor.